Bright Spots & Future Changes: Current COVID-19 Related Musings

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and forty three, which is first airing in late April of twenty twenty. It's going to be a conversation between Sarah and me today talking about life in general and what we are learning from what will have been. It's about six seven weeks of quarantine at this point, continuing for a few more weeks for sure, but hopefully easing up before too long. So, Sarah, what have you been up to in the last weeks to well, you know, I hate to use the term silver lining because in an event this tragic, I don't want to minimize, you know, what's going on for people who are suffering, But the reality is that for many who aren't as directly impacted, there probably have been some either pockets of found time or just changes in routine that maybe have provided some benefit. And I have been one of those people, even though I've still been practicing healthcare. So that's been nice. And I am excited to say that I finally was able to launch my blogs newsletter, which was one of my projects for twenty twenty. I really the reason it got done was because I outsourced it on that Yeah, because I, number one, don't necessarily have tons of extra time right now, and the amount of time it would have taken me to figure this out was probably a lot. But the amount of time that it took Amanda, who I hired to do it, to figure it out was probably minimal from her standpoint. But she did a great job. And now I have a whole pop up that comes up and you can sign up, and I know how to send out an email through Mailchimp, so I'll be sending those out monthly, So if you want to check it out, you can stop by my bug. Yeah, definitely sign up for that and get the extra special Sarah stuff that she's not sharing with the broader world this secret stuff, secrets Sarah stuff. That's awesome. Yeah, well you've been quite busy as well from a professional standpoint. Yeah, So I'm now doing two daily podcasts. It's complete sort of career pivot here, but yeah, two daily podcasts, both Before Breakfast and The New Corner Office. The New Corner Office is sharing strategies currently for working from home, largely though, as people pivot out of that over the next few months, it's going to be broadly about flexible and location independent work. So a lot of people no longer need to be in an office five days a week. Perhaps some of these people were working in jobs that previously were told needed to be in an office five days a week, but we have now learned that that is not the case. So this podcast is a manual for self directed work. You know, how do you thrive in a career when you are more in charge of things like hours and task setting and all that. I'm also excited to announce I will probably people read my blog that we'll have seen this before, but I am working on an ebook. Penguin and I are have reached a deal that is going to be a very quick Turnaround Ebook, also called The New Corner Office, about similar topics about how to direct your own career, direct your own work, set your own schedule, manage your own expectations and accountability and all sorts of things that people are needing to learn. It's aimed, we say, it's the at the millions who work for home from home for the first time during the COVID nineteen pandemic, but can't imagine going back to commuting five days a week after this. So that's coming out I think early July. Wow, that is a quick turnaround. Oh my goodness, it's April right now, So that's that's amazing. But I can kind of see why they wanted to push that one out of there quickly. Yeah, And I mean we'll come out as an ebook first, I mean partly because like, no one's in an airport bookstore buying a physical book right now. You know, this is the reality of the business book market at the moment. But if it gets uptake, we might reprint it then as a paperback later on. For instance, That's what wound up happening with What the most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, which is started its life as an ebook many years ago and then came out as a paperback after that when there was a market. And that's one of the cool things about the technology these days is you know, for anyone considering this, you can do short ebooks very very quickly. If you do them on your own, you can do them almost instantaneously. Going through a major publisher, there's a little bit more of a lag time, but then you have better distribution, but you know, you can test stuff out and without some of the massive overhead that printing a book and distributing it to retail stores entails, So you know, small pivots check what's going on something people might consider absolutely well. We have one negative piece of change, which is that Laura and I had this very exciting international trip planned where we were just lucky enough that there was a reader in a European country that had invited us to do a talk, and we were both so excited about that, and for me it was like checking off multiple boxes, like okay, getting to do a live seminar on this kind of stuff, and then also getting to take a girl's trip, and we were going to hear some music and that's not happening anymore, which is fine, I think I'm hoping, very hopeful that maybe this we can like you know, keep the event, but just have it in a different year perhaps, But that has been one, I guess, pivot or change. On the upside, my June is much less hectic now. Yes, exactly, mine too, Mine too. Yeah, you won't have to like lug a pump on a you know, an international flight, although I know you were totally gamed to do it, which is amazing. Yes, no, I I was gamed to do it. But yeah, we'll figure out some other time. And I mean, really like everything associated with this thing is over. I mean the institution we were going to a shutdown, the music festival has been canceled, like the planes aren't going. There's just everything is gone. But oh well, you know it will come back. It will come back, Yes, it will. Yeah, So let's go through our list of things that are making us happy right now. So Sarah had that she sent me, and I'm a slacker on the notes front. I was going to say, for Sarah, Yeah, this is unusual because normally a little behind scenes, you know, Laura and I send notes back and forth. So I write to her and then she'll write to me, and we kind of put things together. And this time I gave her all of my stuff and her stuff is secret, so you know, which is a nice surprise. Reactions will be real. Okay, So on my list and I made I made two separate lists. I made a things making me happy list and I made a things I will try to take away from this list. So I'm like to hear yours and maybe we'll have to do our ad break in the middle of yes somewhere. Oh perfect, perfect, Okay, So the things making me happy. My daily checklist is keeping me alive, which is like a physical checklist in my planner where I put a little dot for each of these things that I accomplished, and they include meditation, writing a blog post, doing my workout, going outside usually for a walk, reading something doesn't matter what but not like scrolling online like a book, and doing my nightly skincare, which is definitely a ritual now. And yeah, that's provided this much needed daily structure, kind of doable goals. I actually enjoy all the tasks on that list, so you know, that's at least six guaranteed nice things in each day. So yeah, I would say that's like making me the most happy She put a picture of it on her blog, by the way, and one of the humorous says that you mentioned, it's like Ben Franklin. It is totally like Ben Franklin. If anyone's read the autobiography of Ben Franklin, he talks about how he created a chart with you know, his thirteen goals, his habits, and they were like thirteen virtues or eighty virtues, and then the days of the week, and then he would put a check mark for each day that he did his thing. So Sarah is exactly the same, except it's not temperance, it's skincare. So yes, I think I made a joke that I did not think Ben Franklin had skincare on his list, But there you go. So that's the first thing making me happy. And then some of these kind of relate to that. But I put going outside with the kids around the neighborhood as a separate item because we have been able to drag them out many nights. Sometimes we have to bribe them with like ice cream afterwards, or threat of you know, if a kid doesn't go outside, then the other kid picks the movie or something like that. But it's worked, and it's been really, really nice. I always find beautiful things to take pictures of. You know, we're noticing it's so you know, COVID cliche, but we are noticing more of nature, different birds around the area, trees, that kind of a thing. So it's really nice. I feel like my kids have actually been slightly better behaved than they were prior to this, which is maybe backwards from what many might think, but I think it may be due to the fact that they can now sleep as late as they want, and we know there's you know, known links between sleep and behavior, so I think that's probably helping to some extent, and it makes me I mean, we're going to get to this in my other section, but like maybe they were a little overscheduled before, so maybe this has been good. I love not having to rush in the morning, so that's huge. I can still do my morning routine, but then the kids getting up after seven is amazing. I like not having any fomo, and I guess I didn't really realize I had fomo before, but maybe it was more like a conflicted feeling like oh, if I'm doing this, I'm not doing this, and now there's like not that much to do, so I'm very peaceful with what I am doing, if that makes sense. And then finally, I think my last one was it. I do not miss wearing work clothes. Obviously, you know we still have on camera meetings. I did not dress up for this particular one, Laura. Sorry for work ones. I do try to at least put on makeup and like a dark shirt so it looks respectable. But man, I like to not spend my money on my work clothes. I like to not get dressed in them. Which is kind of funny because we, you know, recently had a fashion focused episode and I'm sure in the future I will be ready to delve back into that, but right now it's nice to have a break. Yeah, I was laughing about that. You talked in that episode with Lannie about how you were wearing your fleece with the logo on it, and I guess you can keep wearing the fleece with the logo on it. There is nothing to stop you. Actually, now at work, I've been wearing scrubs, so it's even more Yeah, that's true. Well, there you go. So I guess my thing's making me happy right now. We've been going on family walks too, we tend to do them on weekends. We'll put all of us in the car, the minivan goes somewhere, walk on a trail, you know, try to be six feet away from other people on the trail. So there's some that are way too crowded to make work. But others we've been going to and the kids grumble every single time about going. But I mean they would like to sit there and watch TV and eat candy all day. And you know that they do a lot of that. I'm not saying they don't do that, but getting them out for a hike is nice, and while we're walking, they tend to enjoy it. I'm happy also that I don't have to get kids anywhere at a certain time. I mean, yes, I would like them to get out of the house at some point. I'm getting a little stir crazy with them here and the noise and all that, but it is nice to have less of that rushing to get out the door. It's nice. I'm happy that I'm not timing feedings around going places. That has been a you know, I forgot what's sort of stress that was, like do I pump? How many ounces have I pumped? In order to cover this amount that they might need for when I'm gone, and yeah, there's just none of that. I just feed them the baby and I don't particularly like driving. It's nice that I don't have to drive anywhere. My husband does all the grocery shopping. I guess he's decided he's going to be the family warrior, going out to make that happen. He may enjoy escaping the house. I am particularly happy that I am not having to force the kids to go to swim practice. I realized that this was a major source of unhappiness in my life. And it's possible that another parent in our family is the one who really wants them to do swim and yet this other parent was generally not home at four point thirty when swim practice happened. So there were some bad incentives here that one parent wanted them to go, and one parent was to make them go. And now that's not happening anymore, and I'm not sure it will ever happen again. Family meals also really enjoying that we've I mean, we're doing family dinner every night. So yeah, those are those are some things I have to say. I'll throw in a shout out here. We had talked about baby products back in the day. I think we did an episode on that back in September, and we had talked about the SNeW My sister is also greatly enjoying. She actually rented her snow. Rented. Yeah, well, so I I'm curious what the rental rates are. I hadn't run the numbers, she told me, and I already forget. I want to say one fifty a month or two hundred a month, something like that. Well, so I got my snow on sale. They were doing a post Christmas sale, and so when I had the baby a little early, I was just in the hospital with him and I was like, okay, let me order the snow. It was, you know, thirty forty percent off or something like that, and so we got one. You know, now, of course we don't have the night nanny. So it's it's been really good for him sleeping. I think it does often get him settled down again, so he like startles awake. You know, it has a gas bubble or whatever he will it's rocking him and it has the white noise and so it soothes him down. And the swaddle is part of it too, And you can have children swaddled a little longer in the snow because they're clipped in that you can't do if you have them in a crib. And I think babies do enjoy being swaddled. I mean, they may fight when you first put him in it, but it makes them calm. So there's a safety thing that you can't swaddle them at the point where they could potentially roll over. But because they can't roll over in the snow with the way the clips are, they can be swaddled longer. Anyway, It's not a miracle worker. It does not put him to sleep, like I can't put him in, you know, awake and have it rock him to sleep like that still has to kind of happen manually, but you know, I do think he sleeps a little longer and better than my other kids in cribs at that age. So I'll give a shout out to it. So enjoying that awesome. Well we'll take a quick break and be right back with some things we might be taking away from this. All right, Well, we are back talking about things we are learning during the COVID nineteen pandemic. Things we will take away from this experience. So Sarah what have you been learning? Well, I think a common theme across a lot of people is that, you know, now we're forced to not be doing a lot, so it makes us question like if we don't miss certain things, then were they worth the time and financial commitments in our lives. And I certainly have come out on the side where I do think we were doing more than we needed to be doing, especially for my kids activity standpoint. I mean, I wrote kids' activities are overrated, and I don't know if I feel, you know, some kids' activities are wonderful, and I know my daughter like has really enjoyed her art classes, and actually I told her that I may not be sending them to their the after school program they were doing, and she in particular was not thrilled with that because two of her friends go there, so it's become more of a social thing for her. So we'll see. I guess I'm feeling like, especially now that my kids are getting a little older, I don't feel the pressure to have them do things that they aren't into doing themselves, like it's not worth it. And I even know, like I from my job, I kind of see what happens to kids. I've now been at it long enough that like, I have some patience. I've been following since they're seven and now they're fourteen, and like, just because the kid was super you know, doing five things and the parents were so excited about their ice skinning, gymnastics and swimming at age seven doesn't mean they're going to be doing any of those things at fourteen. Half the time, at fourteen, they've like quit everything and they're like, you know, they just are expressing their own style, and now they're into like making movies or like something totally you know, different. So I guess I'm not as excited as I was about trying to expose them to everything. If they are interested in something and they want to do it, that's great. I don't think I necessarily push them into things. But it was more like I'd be like offering ten different things, and in the future I might just be like, Hey, is there any one or two things you want me to sign you up for this year? And if the answer is no, like maybe it can be no. You know, I'd like them to do one active thing. But if Cameron's active thing is like skateboarding in our driveway, like maybe that's okay. So I do feel like I will take away from this a less financial and time investment in kids' activities unless the kids specifically express interests in those activities. And the only activity I want to put Genevieve in is swim lessons because that's a safety thing. The second thing is that I can be pretty happy spend very little money on doing anything. Like, yes, there was an initial like reactionary grief period about things that were planned and aren't happening, but I'm I don't know, like I don't know if maybe it's just like, well, I'm happy, because everybody has a baseline of happy and you're going to fall into it anyway. And I still want to travel, Like it's not like I don't want to travel, But I don't know. I guess I don't know that we need to spend as much money on things, and I'd probably be a little happier continuing down the path of like saving a little more that we had already started. Honestly, before this pandemic, I had been talking a lot about financial independence and not retiring early, but kind of getting to a point where work was more optional. And I still feel very committed to that, and I feel like in these uncertain economic times, it's even more important to be smart and not waste money on things that aren't truly bringing me joy. So I guess it's been a nice reminder that, like, you know, or even in retirement, like how much we have to live on, Like I don't need to go to fancy dinner once a week. I don't even know that I need like a fancy date night, you know, as much as we were doing so so just about you know, thoughts about spending. Although I did just make a giant skincare order that was not cheap, but as we said, that's that's an entry on your habit chart, so we have to keep up Branklin chart on skincare, like, yeah, you gotta spend there. And it's a simple pleasure that we can certainly still do right now. So I'm enjoying that. Okay, two more things and then we'll switch gears to you. The third one is that I think my job, and I've kind of spoken about this previously, my job as it stands now, where I am half program director and half well really forty percent clinical because I'm zero point one fte podcaster and unpaid from my job standpoint, it has more inherent flexibility built in than I currently use. And I don't think anyone was keeping track of where I was doing certain forms of work. They were keeping track of whether I was getting things done. Certainly fact, you know, I have some people above me that have actually gotten even more interested in what all of our daily activities are, which is fine because I'm pretty productive and I kind of like writing out, hey, I did this and this and this and this, but where I do them and in what order I do them, and like when my break is like no one cares, No one cares. So I think in the future I will be nicer to myself about like, you know, I could take a walk. I could even like do a lunch break and maybe record a podcast, especially if I'm working somewhere else. You know, I can allow myself more flexibility than I currently have. That's not to say I'm going to stay home and never show up again, but more than I was before, which was pretty much rigidity. And then the last thing is I think our organization and many organizations, oh I have one more, I forgot about that one I'll get to that have too many meetings, So there's a lot of standing meetings, a lot of weekly meetings, and now that we can't meet in person, I think some of the benefit of those was that kind of like, oh, we can see each other, like we build those relationships. But now that they're digital and the relationship building part just doesn't feel as worthwhile. It just doesn't seem like we need to have quite as many and I think we need to be more focused and I'm sure this is true for a lot of places as to what are the goals, what is the takeaway from any giving meeting, and to kind of announce that at the beginning. I did find that one thing that worked nicely in an online meeting yesterday that I was running that was quite long. It was like an hour and forty five minutes where we were reviewing basically what was going well with our residency program and what needed to be fixed, and we had a bunch of faculty and several residents on is that we had a big word document that everybody was able to see on the screen and we were going through kind of section bisection, and then as people were suggesting things, I was like actionably adding items to the document, so I felt like everyone could see the sort of tangible building of what we were doing and how it was important to have everyone's voice there, and I think it went pretty well. So I don't know that we would have done that if the meeting had been in person, honestly, but I felt like it was a nice modality that worked pretty well. And finally, the last one is I've just become a little bit more flexible with how I like to do my planning, which you guys know I'm very passionate about, and I might start to try using an electronic calendar for my primary calendar, which is like saying a lot for someone who resisted for a long time. But I found that using planners still really helps me and I really enjoy it, but I don't necessarily need that to be where I keep kind of my hard calendar landscape. And now that there are so many meetings that I have to click through anyway like that are zoom or WebEx or whatever, having them all in one electronic placement actually makes sense. So there you go. That's what's my takeaways. Yeah, we've been some interesting things. One is on our food waste front. I mean I feel like or just waste in general. I feel like I'm already kind of stupidly frugal on stuff anyway, and this is exacerbating some tendencies in that regard. But the you know, I like making toast out of the heel of the bread that the kids won't eat, and you know, using up the little tubes of conditioner that you have from stuff. You know, like, I'll give you a thumbs up on the toast and a thumb down thumb's done on the conditioner. Yes, well, I'm I'm upping my conditioner game soon, but it's uh, you know, the the little tubes need to get used at some point, and you may as well. You know, we're I don't know, use half a paper towel instead of a full paper towel. And it's nothing bad about that. Also, and we try to limit my husband's trips to the grocery store, right that if you say, well we are not going more than once a week, then you need to be a little bit better about using stuff up that you have. And so yeah, we've been we've been doing that. So that's something we'll probably take away from all this. You know, a really sort of experimental mindset are like what can I get done at different points of time during the day and what can't I get done? And I know I'd talked about recording my podcast first thing in the morning because that was a time it was quiet, And then I've been listening to myself and wow, my voice sounds gravelly and gross in the morning. So I just I either have to record multiple times to get it good enough that I want to send it out into the world, or it could be much more efficient if I, you know, tell the children they need to be quiet for twenty minutes and do a couple of them and then maybe another twenty minute period some other point. I also do them at night if I can get the baby down, then the house is it's quiet at nine thirty as it would be at six am. Only my voice sounds a lot better at nine thirty because it's had a whole day of being warmed up versus six am. So just trying things out, and I think that sense of, you know, using any time available. I feel like I'm already efficient because I think about productivity all the time and when is the best time for things. But boy, I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself when I have eight thirty to four thirty quiet to nobody around. What am I? I don't know. I'll have to write war and peace or something, because it's going to be it's gonna be crazy. Other things will take away. I've been doing a lot of Legos. The kids have an hour or so of quiet time in their room, screen free quiet time, and under duress, they will do it, and they discover that they like things like Legos. They can also all play together, I mean the non baby ones, but the four big kids can play together and sort some stuff out. I mean, yes, there's occasionally fights and violence. The fights I tend to just let go. The violence I may intervene depends on how bad it is. But they, you know, they have to learn this kind of emotional self regulation and that if you are stuck with these three playmates for the foreseeable future, you have to figure out a way to play together, and so, you know, shove them all in the backyard and let it go as it goes. So he may do a little bit more of that. I think I already mentioned swim team. Yeah, I am just you know, I know that at some point this will change and my husband will have to return to working in the way he has been working. But I think that might be somewhat different too. I think that he's enjoyed having some time here as well, and I think so that may you know, on the margins have a few more hours working at home versus other places. So yeah, I wonder if maybe he will not have to travel as much potentially. Well, it's interesting question because now of course that it's not really an option. A lot of people who are in professional service firms have figured out ways to work with their clients virtually, and the question is, well, will the clients still be okay with that once you can get on a plane and go see them. And I don't know. I mean, it may be that the clients themselves won't be in the office as much and so there's less of an impetist to go see them at the office if they're working at their houses, and you know, then you can all just be virtual. So I don't know. I think no one's really quite sure how it's going. I you know, for the new Corner office, I've been interviewing a couple of different people who have tips and tricks for working from home, and I've heard from some business leaders who are like, you know, we didn't think remote work would work, which is why we didn't do it, because we thought we all needed to be there to make things happen. And then with our backs against the wall, we had to go virtual. And have found that our team members still like each other and work with each other, and they still do stuff like they're not watching Netflix all day, so you know, we still want to come back to the office. But on the margins, it's they're not going to be saying like, you know, yes, you have to absolutely be in your seat from eight thirty to five thirty. And because it's not, I wonder if I wonder if more companies are going to move to like a hybrid model because they're you know, it's like there's actually some benefits to not being in the office sometimes when you do need to do deep work now and now when your kids are home, which is the situation now, but that's not going to be true forever. And I almost wonder whether certain firms or would be better off saying like, Okay, this is an office day, and then Tuesdays are like a home day for everyone to get stuff done without bothering each other. Like there's just all sorts of new possibilities. I think it's exciting, no, and I think that could be a great hybrid model. So that, yeah, we all work in the office three days a week at home two days a week, and you know, to make it work, there's going to be a little bit less flexibility than if people are just kind of completely in charge of their own schedules. But I do think that often working remotely has an element of pure productivity to it. It's not just about work life balance. It's about working in a different place where it's impossible to get where it's possible to get more done. So yeah, good change. All right, Well let's go to our listener question here. So our listener says she's been listening to best of both worlds since episode one. Thank you, we appreciate it. So her question is can we talk a little bit about charitable giving? So you speak often of opportunities that arise with higher incomes, and one opportunity that she wants to explore is being more financially generous. But she doesn't know where to begin. How do you operationalize charity. She didn't grow up in a family that prioritize this, and she's not a church goer. So she doesn't have much of a framework. How does one sort out all the competing factors to decide how and to whom to give and how to decide on the amount. Her husband and her are oriented towards the fire movement to financial independence. They have two kids and are thinking they are fire I guess they are fire ish, she says, they are financially independent. Are thinking of starting with ten percent of our strictly discretionary income. Is it better to give locally or do national organizations lots of small donations or bigger ones, or lump some directly, or to people asking for help? Excited to hear your thoughts, well, do you want to go first? Well, so I realize now that I'm looking at my response that I read her a thing wrong. I thought she was saying she was donating ten percent of her net, and I was like, damn, that is amazing. But she's she's donating a more reasonable or more probably common one percent or so of the net, which is ten percent of their discretionary which is an interesting way to look at it. I've never really sat down and you know, looked broken down what is quote discretionary and what isn't and interestingly, I think we're probably you know, similar, not to give specific numbers, but something like that. I do think that it's probably better to give to fewer things with more sizeable amount, just because you can feel and you can feel like you're making more of an impact and don't I don't know. I mean, I guess there's not really a scientific reason, although I think that every time you're giving, there's going to be administrative costs, you know, associated with the giving itself, so that if you are on like fifty different charity lists and giving ten dollars each, that's not as meaningful than giving you know, one big five hundred dollars donation or something like that or more. We personally, like our biggest thing that we donate to right now is the foundation that's associated with the hospital that I work at, because I know that they do a lot of good for the community. So that's and it's just something that's close to home for me. But I mean this is also still a work in progress for us as well. I do think, you know, you have to balance whether you'd rather say for retirement versus give now. I think the best case scenario would be to have, you know, be conservative enough so that we do oversave for retirement and then perhaps have even larger chunks that have grown over the years to donate when we are, you know, past that fire phase because we've allowed the money to sit there and grow. But there's no one right way to do this. I think that if you're thinking about it, that's probably a great first step, as long as you're not just thinking that, you you know, put something into action each year. And I like the idea of looking at a certain person edge of your discretionary I think that's a nice way to view it. Yeah, I've, you know, over the years, talk to a number of people who are giving away larger sums of money just that I've interviewed them for various things, and everyone goes through this learning phase. It turns out it is harder to give significant chunks of money away wisely than you might imagine. And so people who do have significant chunks of wealth for whatever reason, either it's been a slow, steady growth or you know, they come into a lot of money suddenly with an IPO or a you know, inheritance or whatever, but they are or selling a business that you try little things, you see what excites you, You see what seems to make a difference, and then you start making bigger bets on those sorts of things. So it's very similar to how you might do investing as well, if you are also into angel investing, for instance, and making small bets, seeing what works, what kind of founders you like to work with, that sort of thing. In general, a couple guidelines here. You're better off giving close to the place that will use it, so locally or even to the local division of a national organization. You're probably best off giving places that you are personally involved with as well. She said she wasn't a churchgoer, but this is one of the reasons that houses of worship are the most popular places for charitable giving, because you know what they do, like you help out with it. You're there every week providing accountability. So there's just a lot of upsides to charitable giving through that. But of course there's ways to replicate that if you are not religious as well. She could make a short list of the causes that motivate her, pick a small number like three tops organizations to give to very generously. Like you said, there's transaction costs, so you're better off concentrating your giving with those organizations, though, you may be better off giving monthly versus annually so that the organizations can manage cash flow, although it depends. If they're huge then it doesn't matter. But if they are smaller organizations than monthly cash flow tends to be the way to look at it. If you can volunteer at these places too, that's great because then you get multiple ways of giving and feeling involved in the cause and seeing what they really need too that you might learn that they need bigger chunks of money in February for some reason, and you know, that's just the kind of thing that's good to know and makes you feel more connected to it. You said your biggest donations were to your hospital foundation. Ours, interestingly enough, are to Texas A and M University. But the reason for that is that my husband got a full ride there when he was going to college, and I know that was very helpful for him. So we have, you know, I would say, an obligation to pay that back, and so we have. So we now have one scholarship that we have done with his siblings that was in honor of his parents, and then we did one personally, which is kind of funny. That there is now a Laura Vanderkam Scholarship at Texas A and M me and him, but they list either I don't know if they list the woman's name first in formal documents on things like this. But do you get to select who receives it? Do you get that hour? No, we give guidelines of who can you know? So it's it's biochemistry because that's what he was a major in. And then there's funds for like summer programs and stuff like that too, So it's kind of fun and they you know, you can meet your recipient, like he's gone to events at A and M where he's met the first person young person who's got the name with the one with his parents' names on it, and you know, they give us updates on how it's going, which is kind of fun. You know. It's so that I mean, well, we'll do other stuff in the future, but this was just one way to start because it was something where we did have an obligation I cure. I like choral music. I give to the Young New Yorker's Chorus, which I was involved in back in New York, and they do a annual competition for young composers, so I helped fund their competition where they commission three new works every year, and I hope to do more of that here with my choir in Pennsylvania as well. All right, so love of the week, Yeah, ours is I'm sure like many people right now, we are having a ritual of weekly takeout from a local place every Saturday night. The kids always wanted to be sushi or pizza. I am trying to get them to branch out and I think I've convinced them to do tacos this weekend. So yeah, little bright Spot, I have not done takeout at all, and it's just one of these weird things that take out and delivery of food. In my mind, it doesn't exist. And I think what happened. I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before. When we moved here in twenty eleven, no one was delivering to our neighborhood and so it was just like, oh it just you know, we can't do it. We either have to send somebody out to get it, which takes a lot of effort. So no one delivers here except Domino's Pizza, and I don't really want pizza, so okay, well we just have to cook. That's not the case anymore. Like DoorDash comes here, grub Hub, all this stuff, and so you know, I just need to do more of it. That's slowly broken down that barrier in my mind of money I am not allowed to spend it is It is a really lovely pleasure and like I actually find it if you do it once a week, it's like it's like the right interval where it doesn't get tiresome. It's still exciting, but it's really kind of convenient and nice. Yeah, so I guess my love of the week is these peanut butter pretzels from Costco that they're little nuggets they pretzels on the outside and peanut butter on the insund Boy are they good. I eat a lot of them deliciously. All Right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about what we are taking away from the coronavirus epidemic, things we are happy about now, trying to put a little bit of a silver lining on what is really a tough situation. So we will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.